I’ve always found beauty in the quiet changes of life — the way a seedling cracks its shell with imperceptible resolve, growing from unassuming seed to delicate sprout; tightly coiled shoots of verdant flesh unfurling vibrant fronds that glimmer with confident repose.
My lover, Sara, was once a sapling: slender, careful, sharpened by years of self-restraint. But love, I’ve learned, is a greenhouse. Under its humid embrace, even guarded roots swell.
The first sign was her ring. A delicate silver band I’d sized down to fit her slim finger. I told her to wait until she fit the ring but her impatience could not be reasoned with. Within a month of the ring’s resizing, she could no longer fit into it.
She told herself, “it’s probably just hormones, a bit of swelling that’ll go away in a few days.” She left the uncomfortable ring off for a week and tried again after the water weight diminished — sure enough, it fit again! Wait, “oh no” she said to herself. It wasn’t wearable for more than an hour so she hid it away again, concealing a portent she wasn’t willing to accept yet.
A week or two later, I decide to finally ask her why she hadn’t worn her ring, joking that she must’ve lost it. She opened a drawer filled with rings and told me she thinks she’s gained a bit of weight. Almost none of her rings fit her. I feel my skin begin to flush as I look down at the rings. She began showing me how even her big rings no longer passed her knuckle. I looked down at the floor to compose myself before reassuring her that she looks amazing.
I said “Maybe it’s the summer heat that’s causing some swelling in the extremities. The same thing happens to me, especially if I don’t drink enough water.”
It was not a lie; she looked largely the same besides a subtle roundness to her face, hips, and arms, juxtaposing the petite, lithe girl I met a few months ago — but I’d be lying if I said my heart rate wasn’t piqued as I watched her struggle to fit into those rings that fit so recently.
She replied, “You think so? I guess I could be better at my water intake…”
“Of course, it’s not uncommon at all, don’t stress it.”
I have a feeling that feeders tend to possess greater powers of observation than most. Voyeurism seems to be an implicit aspect of our kind, except our type of voyeurism is more discrete than its usual form. We’re not watching people undress or have sex through a window; we simply observe people the same way everyone else does.
The contrast lies in our internal monologue:
“Did her side profile always have that little double chin? It seems like she no longer needs a belt for those pants… Am I crazy or have her arms started to get bigger? I know that dress is supposed to be tight but the fabric around the buttons is visibly stretching… Did she always burp this much? Wow, she really enjoys unbuttoning her pants after dinner almost every night now.”
As we progressed into a more exclusive relationship, her shift in eating habits was immediate. She was still a slow eater but a persistent one, leaving her plates empty before asking for my leftovers or another serving. With saucy dishes, she licked the dish clean, savoring every bit of flavor, punctuating a delicious meal with a modest belch.
It’s odd because our form of voyeurism is permissible — Sara’s existence is sensual to me in a way I can’t fully control, which means permissibility can easily drift into exploitation if one’s appetites lean toward excess.
I’m sure some of us relish the surreptitious aspect of this kink more than others; One might encourage a girl to wear clothes a size too small when going out, or arrange her laundry so that her large or athletic clothes are easier to access than her smaller ones, or continuously deny that you notice her weight gain despite your growing attentiveness towards her love handles and tummy while cuddling. Some might even go a step further, an awful, immoral step further, and become shameless servants to her every whim, craving, and fleeting desire.
Is it really so vile to find pleasure in giving pleasure?
To be honest, my convictions were loose from the start. I quickly took note of what her favorite foods were, what she craved when she was on her period, what time she took her lunch breaks, etc. In many ways, I simply wanted to be a loving and attentive partner. In more sincere ways, I couldn’t help myself.
I would make homemade teriyaki bowls and gyoza and take them to her at lunch, defer to what she wanted to eat for dinner whether it was takeout or cooking, never finish my plate and offered her what was left. I’d prepare whatever dessert she craved whether it was cookies, pie, brownies, French toast, etc. She never had to verbalize a craving or desire twice to me. I was and am a willing captive to her appetites, and she an eager patron of indulgence.
The rapture of our relationship concealed the growing number of changes enveloping her. Small changes began to compound. The range of her preferred clothes became noticeably smaller, as did the size of those outfits around her figure. It became a morning ritual to watch her hop and shimmy her growing thighs and ass into pants that were loose a few months ago. Belts were a necessity of a bygone era; in fact, she started to utilize the rubberband trick just to keep her pants closed as she could no longer button them. It was only a few weeks ago that I noticed her consistently unbuttoning her pants after dinner to let her tummy breathe — now her pants were lucky to still be buttoned by the time she got in the door. Large sweatshirts and baggy shirts became a necessity.
She sensed the growing softness of her body, a softness that was once a whisper capable of being shoved into a jewelry box, was now pleading to be emancipated from her strained skims. She stuffed her supple body into them, hiking the hem up below the bottom of her swelling breasts, before glancing in the mirror and realizing she still looks 7 months pregnant. “It’s bloating,” she said to herself as she hurriedly slipped into her technically socially acceptable sweatpants and sports bra (now a majority of her daily outfits).
She hurried into the kitchen, her breasts nearly bouncing out of her bra. I hand her a breakfast burrito which had become her part of her morning ritual, a habit that no doubt assisted in the colonization of her wardrobe by athletic wear. She flurried out the door before stopping and yelling “babe, can you bring me a McFlurry for my lunch today? Please?”
I smile and run to kiss her, “yes, of course, have a good day, baby.”
It’s funny that she even feels the need to ask politely. I suppose even the loveliest flowers practice humility in the morning twilight. Her soft new growth finally cresting over the edge of their stifling pot, ready to bask in the perfumed sunshine they’ve unknowingly sought since the first broadening of their leaves. Her smile was already arresting in its organic beauty; her body could commit excessive force without even touching you. Even small changes on a marmoreal body like hers could spell ruin for an empire, and I’m just a man! Yet in true Hellenistic fashion, I’d gladly follow her muse to the end of history and exalt her with my final breath.
God, I love admiring small changes, the stretch in the seams of her jeans, the steadily growing pile of clothes in our Good Will donation storage bucket, the soft imprint of her breasts spilling over the top of her outgrown bras whenever she wears thin shirts. I tell myself that I’m just a passive observer, a lover without ideology or allegiance. Perhaps this mantra protects me from the truth of my cravings, prolongs the story that I hope never ends. My denial facilitates her denial — if I’m a lover without cause then she’s a piggy without fault.
To her dismay, all of her clothes are starting to feel suffocating. Yet, she’s resistant to buying new ones — wasn’t it only a few months ago that she promised herself to get back down to 120lbs? Is she really on the verge of outgrowing her “chubby” clothes that she never even meant to keep?
At times, it seems as though she’s aware of what is happening, noticing my fascination and attention toward her growing body. She catches me looking at her belly when she leaves the shower before quickly covering herself with a towel. She notices that my hand prefers to rest on her stomach when cuddling, and in response, she’s now gently nudges my hand onto her belly without a word spoken. Sometimes she even openly acknowledges her weight gain, the tightening of her clothes, the swelling of her breasts and hips, while maintaining an almost playful tone.
We were laying in bed one night when she suddenly says, “Remember when this used to be loose?' she whispers, guiding my hands to her hips where her old 'comfy' pajama shorts now cut into her flesh. The elastic waistband had become a demarcation line, creating a soft roll of pudge that spilled over the top. I trace the deep imprints left in her skin, marking where she'd grown too plump for her loungewear. She shivers at my touch, and I pull my hand away, “sorry, didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
She says “no, it just felt… good. I like when you touch my hips, maybe you could even kiss them…”
I bend down over the roll of soft pudge that was exposed and gently kiss it. She laughs, “sorry, that tickled, maybe bite it a little, like you’re giving a hickey.”
I did as I was told, gripping her soft thigh while aggressively sucking on her love handle. She moaned. She said “Hm, that felt good, maybe you should incorporate that into your bag of tricks for next time.”
She grins and rolls over to sleep, followed shortly by a soft snoring. “Huh” I muse to myself.
A few days later, I walk into the bedroom as she’s struggling to find what fits and what doesn’t. I debate whether I should tell her about my predilections or not. I’ve given most of my self to her already, but there’s still that awkward, unspoken crumb I’ve yet to give her. Small changes go both ways, right?
As she stood in front of the mirror, sighing at the way her sweater clung to her newly rounded hips, I linger in the doorway. “You’re staring again,” she says, not turning around. Her voice was light, but her knuckles whitened on the hem of the fabric.
“Not staring,” I say. “Admiring.”
She meets my eyes in the reflection, a flicker of vulnerability in her gaze. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If this… bothered you?”
I step closer, my hands hovering at her waist. “Does it bother *you*?”
She hesitates, then leans back into me. “Sometimes. But not when you look at me like that.”
My thumbs traces the curve of her love handles. “Like what?”
“Like I’m something to worship,” she whispers.
I grip her tightly, kissing her gently on her forehead.
“You have no idea how much I worship you, Sara.”
In that moment, I tell her everything, even the voyeuristic aspect of it. I admit that my obsession with pleasing her is both an expression of genuine love and an aspect of my sexuality that I genuinely do not know how to disentangle.
“No matter what, my infatuation is not transient or dependent on a single thing other than you. I have loved you from the beginning and I’ve loved you more every day since.”
She looks up at me and chuckles “You’ve loved me everyday since because I’ve been fatter every day since?”
“Stop, I’m being serious” I say while laughing.
“I know” she whispers as she melts into my arms.
Despite revealing everything to Sara, I did not feel the relief that I hoped to feel. We went about our days as normal, not really acknowledging what had happened. I still cupped her curves when we cuddled and kissed every part of her when intimate, but there was tension that existed where none existed before. I wondered if I had ruined things. If I had ruined us.
In order to reignite our connection, I planned an elaborate date night at home that included her favorite flowers, a sparkling tennis bracelet, her favorite meal, dessert, and a movie. She seemed caught off guard when she came home, followed by gratitude. Around midnight, we lumbered to bed without much energy for sex, just cuddling.
As we laid down, I noticed her shirt rode up as she stretched, revealing a sliver of stomach. My breath caught—not at the softness, but at three faint, parallel lines glowing pink in the lamplight. She followed my gaze and yanked her shirt down. “Bug bites,” she said too quickly.
I said nothing. But that night, I dreamt of roots breaking through soil, of bark splitting to make room for new life.
The next day, Sara wondered at her body as she washed herself in the shower. With small physical changes comes small psychological changes as well, and both begin to work upon the other, gaining more and more inertia before bursting into a new, spacious expanse. Anxious excitement swelled within her as she examined herself in the mirror as she began to dress herself for the day.
For years, she kept herself closed off and focused on moving forward, occasionally allowing herself to be accompanied by one of the many suitors that buzzed around her. After experiencing abuse in her youth, finding herself warped into an object of desire for another to use, she guarded every part of herself. Beauty, pleasure, desire — these concepts were things she craved, feared, and utilized for her benefit and maturation. Her power over them meant she had power over the way others perceived and treated her.
Then she met someone that had no interest in taking away her control, instead offering himself to her. She was invited to be seen and acknowledged as a whole person and not just a delicate, pretty flower to be admired and discarded. She resisted at first, unaccustomed to being treated with sincerity and reverence. Then, she blinked. She opened her eyes and found herself in a state of abandonment, her world usurped by love — their world.
This was the catalyst that cracked the small, unassuming seed deep inside of her. Their love strengthened as the days passed, providing more nourishment for the budding flesh inside of her. Her self-confidence was rooted in a new foundation defined by security and unconditional love. Had this not been the case, she probably would not have ignored her weight gain for as long as she had. Fears over her body faded whenever loving hands massaged her back, rubbing her knotted insecurities into oblivion as he’d dig into a tense spot with one hand and conspicuously rest his other hand on her love handle, kneading with both hands as she felt herself losing all resistance… slipping away…
The sound of threading ripping jolted her from her daydream. She looked down just in time to watch the button of her largest jeans shoot across the bathroom like a silver bullet, pinging off the mirror before rolling under the sink. The denim gaped open, revealing the deep creases her softening belly had worn into the fabric's stress points. She ran her fingers over the reddish indent marks stretching across her hips, she held both hands around her paunch, grasping its heft.
“No wonder these pants finally gave up” she thought as she sighed and bent down to get the button…
“Are you kidding me,” she couldn’t help but laugh out loud to herself as leaned up, turned around, and saw a large tear down the middle of her pants revealing her purple panties.
She remembered something I had mentioned the other day about my kink, how she kept acting out his fantasies without even realizing it. She remembered me telling her that I had to hide my erection every time she struggled to put on clothes clearly too small for her. “Hmm,” she thought, before folding the torn pants, placing them on the bathroom counter with the tear facing up, and the button resting right next to it.
She took one of her lipsticks uncapped it, hand hovering near the mirror as butterflies danced in her stomach. Was she really about to do this? The torn pants on the counter seemed to dare her forward. She thought about how his breath caught whenever she complained about her clothes getting tight, how his hands seemed magnetically drawn to her softest parts. The lipstick touched glass and her heart raced as she began to write, each letter a small act of liberation, a reflection traced with crimson streaks like the stretchmarks she’d once resented.
